The increase in environmentally induced diseases and the
loosening of regulation and safety measures have inspired a massive
challenge to established ways of looking at health and the
environment. Communities with disease clusters, women facing a
growing breast cancer incidence rate, and people of color concerned
about the asthma epidemic have become critical of biomedical models
that emphasize the role of genetic makeup and individual lifestyle
practices. Likewise, scientists have lost patience with their
colleagues' and government's failure to adequately address
environmental health issues and to safeguard research from
corporate manipulation.
Focusing specifically on breast cancer, asthma, and Gulf
War-related health conditions-"contested illnesses" that have
generated intense debate in the medical and political
communities-Phil Brown shows how these concerns have launched an
environmental health movement that has revolutionized scientific
thinking and policy. Before the last three decades of widespread
activism regarding toxic exposures, people had little opportunity
to get information. Few sympathetic professionals were available,
the scientific knowledge base was weak, government agencies were
largely unprepared, laypeople were not considered bearers of useful
knowledge, and ordinary people lacked their own resources for
discovery and action.
Brown argues that organized social movements are crucial in
recognizing and acting to combat environmental diseases. His book
draws on environmental and medical sociology, environmental
justice, environmental health science, and social movement studies
to show how citizen-science alliances have fought to overturn
dominant epidemiological paradigms. His probing look at the ways
scientific findings are made available to the public and the
changing nature of policy offers a new perspective on health and
the environment and the relationship among people, knowledge,
power, and authority.
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